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Central America caught in the changing political and moral environment of ethanol

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Abstract

One of the outcomes of US President George W. Bush's recent trip to Latin America was a rare convergence of opinion between London's The Economist and Havana's Fidel Castro. The newspaper could not resist calling Castro "Cuba's tottering Communist dictator," but it nevertheless gave him full credit for warning against the "sinister idea of converting food into fuel." The glossy publication noted huge increases in the price of corn and explained, "As more land is used to grow corn rather than other food crops, such as soy, their prices also rise. And since corn is used as animal feed, the price of meat goes up, too. The food supply, in other words, is being diverted to feed America's hungry cars."
Castro leveled his critique of corn for cars in a series of editorials in Granma. Writing on April 4, after a Camp David meeting between Bush and Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at which ethanol production was discussed, Castro observed, "No one at Camp David answered the fundamental question. Where are the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals that the United States, Europe, and wealthy nations require to produce the gallons of ethanol that big companies in the US and other countries demand in exchange for their voluminous investments going to be produced, and who is going to supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower, and rapeseeds, whose essential oils these same wealthy nations are to turn into fuel, going to be produced, and who will produce them?" .